You need to get rid of anyone that could challenge you in any way. The attack on Obama, real subtle...

But you have to pay attention to the details. The devil is in there.

"Democratic lawmakers condemned Linick’s removal, with Eliot Engel, the Democratic chairman of the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, suggesting it was connected to a probe that the inspector general had opened into Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

“I have learned that the Office of the Inspector General had opened an investigation into Secretary Pompeo,” Engel said in a statement. Pelosi described Linick’s ousting as an acceleration of a “dangerous pattern of retaliation” from Trump.

Last month, Republican President Trump removed a top coronavirus watchdog, Glenn Fine, who was to oversee the government’s COVID-19 financial relief response.

Earlier in May, Trump ousted Christi Grimm, who led the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of the Inspector General (OIG) after accusing her of having produced a “fake dossier” on American hospitals suffering shortages on the frontlines of the coronavirus outbreak.

In April, the president notified Congress that he was firing the inspector general of the U.S. intelligence community, Michael Atkinson, who was involved in triggering an impeachment probe of Trump last year."

He's turning the government into a criminal organisation, one lackey at a time.

"Amid outcry from Democratic lawmakers over Linick's firing, Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley noted in a Saturday statement that the President must provide Congress with written justification for removing inspectors general and said, "a general lack of confidence simply is not sufficient detail to satisfy Congress."The Iowa Republican added that inspectors general "are crucial in correcting government failures and promoting the accountability that the American people deserve."Later on Saturday, Sen. Mitt Romney — the only GOP senator who voted to convict Trump of abuse of power — strongly condemned the firings. "The firings of multiple Inspectors General is unprecedented; doing so without good cause chills the independence essential to their purpose. It is a threat to accountable democracy and a fissure in the constitutional balance of power," the Utah Republican tweeted.

Firing inspectors general is within Trump's discretionary powers. It doesn't require an emergency. So there is nothing unprecedented about it. By contrast, ordering automakers to make ventilators is using dictatorial powers, and you seem to champion that. Why do you want Trump to use dictatorial powers, and then criticize his exercise of discretionary powers as though it were dictatorial?

"If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black."-- Joe Biden to DJ Charlamagne tha God

blackjack21 wrote:Firing inspectors general is within Trump's discretionary powers. It doesn't require an emergency. So there is nothing unprecedented about it.

By contrast, ordering automakers to make ventilators is using dictatorial powers, and you seem to champion that. Why do you want Trump to use dictatorial powers, and then criticize his exercise of discretionary powers as though it were dictatorial?

You write fiction, it's pretty much all you do now.

Trump is, a piece at a time, destroying the checks and balances that make the government work, and keep us from autocracy.

Saeko wrote:Don't worry. The Democrats are already doing everything they can to help him.

As if it wasn't clear enough that both parties are being funded by the same type of crowd.

Obviously a lot of people were growing tired of how things were going, so they had to do something about it. A gap needed to be filled. They had to have an ''anti-establishment'' guy to please a large segment of society. They needed an ''outsider''. They've managed to keep the neocon/neoliberal order alive by bringing in a showbiz guy to play this based populist, who pretends to drain the swamp and will own an annoying journalist in this controlled environment from time to time.

The first thing that makes a dictator possible is a considerable or even majority of people being generally dumb, ignorant or overly proud, that they are capable to let pride to go over their head, while the more righteous portion of the population being ignorant or unrepentant to face their mistakes or arrogance.

The United States of American might have the former part true, but it still takes the latter part to make it happen. It takes two to tango.

Do not overestimate Trump, but do not underestimate how some anti-Trumper's attitude actually pushed people over the other side either. Although with the Wuhan Pneumonia epidemic ravaging the United States economy anti-Trumpers have good reasons to feel a lot safer. Even I, who want an American government hostile or even aggressive against China (and against Russia in that matter), expect Biden to win a landslide this time.

Patrickov wrote:Even I, who want an American government hostile or even aggressive against China (and against Russia in that matter), expect Biden to win a landslide this time.

I wouldn't count on it. Democratic governors and mayors around the country are beginning to face court challenges now. The Wisconsin high court overturned the state's lockdown orders. A judge in Oregon also declared the governor's lockdown order null and void. The mayor of Los Angeles says people can go to the beach on the wet sand, but not the dry sand. It frankly makes no sense. People are just beginning to ignore the orders now. I don't think working class voters are going to be grateful for being made unemployed and bankrupt.

"If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black."-- Joe Biden to DJ Charlamagne tha God

Godstud wrote:Yeah, Americans are too stupid, @Patrickov to vote for their own self-interest. They'll vote in Trump again, even though he's the establishment that they wanted to fight in the first place.

If Biden and Trump are both establishment figures without a dime's worth of difference between them, why do you people loath Trump so much? I think voting for him just to piss you off is a viable enough reason to like him. After all, that has been my stated intention for essentially four years now.

"If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black."-- Joe Biden to DJ Charlamagne tha God

I am not an American, thank goodness. My sanity will not be affected if dumb Americans vote him in. I just pity fools, like you, who think Trump is dismantling ANYTHING. People who only like Trump for the problems he causes, are just assholes.

I do feel sorry for all Americans because they have only two very poor choices for the 2020 election. Biden may be a bad choice, but Trump, for another term, is an even worse one.

“Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson